Show Reviews

Maybe the weekend was just too long and by Sunday the band just couldn’t muster up the energy for a five star performance? Kind of a sloppy, below average show compared to others in late ’89.

Gin was ok coming out of the gate, but still not locked in all the way yet. Funky Bitch was good, and you get a double shot of Mike early on with a nice Ya Mar too, which was a little more tame tonight. Reba was spotty all over the place, but it’s new and hard to play. The solo jam was nice though. Divided Sky was good and rocking. My Sweet one still needs to tighten up a bit, but it’s new. Antelope was a little loose and sloppy to my ears, but it did really rock! Lawn Boy continues to be a nice new chill song. The expected cover song closer tonight is the newly added Frankenstein, and it rocked hard to close up a pretty decent first set.

Not sure what the boys did during set break, but this is not a pretty second set by any means. TMWSIY is a disaster from the time Fish comes in on the drums and Trey is two measures ahead of Page and Mike. Avenu also suffers coming out of Mike’s solo and even Bag has a sloppy ending though it rocked pretty hard. Esther continues the sloppy playing and they are just not locking in tonight. OKP>Suzy was ok, Melt was really slow and plodding, and In a Hole was lackluster. Fee was missing from the recording I heard. Possum rocked as usual and it seems there’s a lot of crowd interaction going on during the whole set as their friends yell out for songs relentlessly. They roar approval as Fish comes out to do Love You, which was actually good considering the rest of the set, and of course, a vacuum solo. Others in the crowd get their wish as we have a Mike’s Groove to close up the set. Mike’s was short and rushed like they were tired, Hydrogen was sloppy as was the Groove, though there is some good jamming in there too. Very sloppy second set overall in my opinion.

IDK gets the call for the first encore tonight with more Fishman antics included. Then nobody seems ready when Trey launches in to an average Golgi to close up.

It’s not a terribly awful show playing wise or singing, its just not tight. Second set definitely brought this one down a notch for me.

While there are flubs, especially in TMWSIY, I think this is an above-average show for the time. I think '97-'98 Trey would throw a beer can at anyone who complains about the flubs and say that the energy of this show was great (see Bittersweet Motel). Reba, Antelope, Bag, Suzy, Melt, are all pretty great versions for this era. Trey is especially on fire throughout the second set, even in In A Hole. If he had to sacrifice some of the composed sections to get there (although he still nails most of 'em), I forgive him for it. The show is on the looser side, but that lends itself to being very fun and energized, in this listener's humble opinion.

Also of note, in this show and a few prior, Trey has been playing around with slowing down the written melody of the end of the jam section of Divided Sky while the band plays at normal tempo, and I think it's a pretty neat effect.

There are some moments here. Trey shreds the Funky Bitch, the end of Antelope, the AC/DC Bag, the SOAMelt, and the Weekapaug up pretty well. But the end of the 'Lope jam is botched, the Esther and Avenu Malkenu are shaky, and TMWSIY is an outright disaster. I'd say overall the sloppy parts and the decent parts average out, so I'll go with three stars here. Oh, I'll mention that there is a Bonanza tease that I will probably think of now every time I hear the first part of Antelope.

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